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February 2006

28th February 2006

Robbie's Reality UPDATE!

Excellently, Robbie Wynen from the International Mole Page and the exciting Realitynet wrote to us on Sunday to tell us about some exciting new Belgian/Dutch reality shows which we've grown fond of over the last year or so. We would have put this up sooner, but we were too busy getting the interview with Peter Davey sorted. Take it away, Robbie.

Next monday (so tomorrow actually, come to think of it!) Belgium's gonna kick off their 5th (or is it 6th already?) Big Brother! The subtitle this year is 'Zero Privacy'. This is because they demolished the old BB House and made a new one from scratch. And here's the thing: wherever you are in the house, you can always see each other, because the walls in the house are made of glass (except of course for the outer walls). If you're in the kitchen, you can look straight into the bedroom or indeed the showers.

This is the website, and this is a commercial with footage from the house.

Then we also have this new show going on (which already exists for a while in other countries) called 71° Noord (71° North). They have to hike from the south of Norway to the North and feel cold. Website here with videos.

Ah, this was nominated for a Golden Rose at the Lucerne festival not so long ago as we recall. Anything else?

On 10th March, Holland's 6th Mole series will start and it'll most probably be online again, just like last year.

Hurrah! I'm assuming it's going to be non-celebrities this time? When we find a link we'll let you know.

Then there's Peking Express, starting on 9th March. A kind of Amazing Race show, but travelling through Asia. There's no website of it yet, but when there is, I'll let you know, because there will probably be videos on it as well. (if you're interested). The Belgian trailer is here and the Dutch trailer is here.

Next Tuesday, Belgium's going to have its own Apprentice version, called The Topmanager. Trailer.

I have to say, I love the idea of calling something The Topmanager. Anymore?

And last but not least: Last week 17 contestants of previous Expeditie Robinson series left for Thailand to do an Expeditie Robinson All Stars! (well it used to be called All Stars and Holland even got to sms who could be a contestant. But then Talpa bought all rights of Expeditie Robinson and chose different contestants (so all the money spent on smsing, was in vain) They also went for a different name... Expedition Robinson: Battle of the Titans! The contestants you probably know from last season are: Douwe, Fleur, Maxime and Marleen. This is a clip of the contestants at the airport leaving for Thailand

That's brilliant! Thanks Robbie. I'm assuming people will be able to watch that on Talpa.tv when it goes out later in the year.

"Thanks Blaine! See you guys tomorrow!"

Well when we're not interviewing top reality producers and having a good old chat about Belgian reality television, more important people find themselves writing to us in their time of great need.

"Hey!

I've been following the UK Game show site for awhile now...I used to work on PYRAMID with Donny Osmond, and then Endemol here in the states...

I wanted to introduce my new alternative entertainment property, 88SLIDE - and would like to see if you would be able to review it.

88SLIDE is a daily one minute info-challenge format, distributed via the Internet at 88slide.com, and through iTunes as a video podcast. Cell phone users can also download the 3GP formatted series at 88slide.com.

Our mission is to entertain, interact, and enlighten you, daily, in 60 seconds.

That's it!"

Well you can't enter if you live in the UK but Blaine's quite amusing.

We've interviewed Peter Davey so you don't have to.

Well I promised you all something a bit special and that's exactly what you're going to get. We asked top producer Peter Davey all about The Mole, Playing it Straight and we gave him a chance to react to the criticisms we made of the early episodes of Beauty and the Geek. Does he concede we were right or is he defiant? Find out here!

And if you haven't realised already, Take the Money or Don't Take the Money... is BACK! With a £200 top prize!

26th February 2006

That mystery interview...

... is coming very soon I promise. You will like it. So much so in fact that we won't bother waiting for the weekend to put it up.

Hey! The Amazing Race starts this week. Good-oh.

23rd February 2006

It's Beryl and June!

Great spot from Barry on Thursday's DoND commentary.

Is the Beryl in contestant's row the same Beryl that went on the run for a whole month for top action/adventure show Wanted back in the day?

Well let's take a look at the evidence:

Well she's certainly quite old.
And there appear to be glasses involved too. It's looking quite good isn't it?

Sadly this is where it falls down - Beryl's the one on the phone here and it's June in the background. Nice try though!

We're really looking forward to Beryl's game.

The Games is/are back!

Hurrah! We love The Games at Bother's Bar. Let's take a look at the line-up...

Bernie Nolan, from The Nolans!!
Javine, from failing to get into Girls Aloud and asking people to touch her "fire"!
Michelle Gayle, from Eastenders!
Amanda Lamb! You know! Amanda Lamb!
Liberal Democrat MP Julia Goldsworthy (OMG! She should be in her constituency etc!)
Peter Duncan out of Blue Peter! Wow!
ex-Damage star Jade Jones!
JK from "top" radio duo JK and Joel!
Celebrity Big Brother 2's Goldie!
MC Plat'num from The Blazing Squads!

No-one from So Solid Crew this year but man, this is going to be awesome.

This year's new events include white water kayaking, archery and kendo. Jamie Theakston hosts, Kirsty Gallacher (last year's winner) takes up Jayne Middlemiss' interview baton.

Beauty and the Geek UK UPDATE!

Well, frankly its taken its time but episode three is a cracker. Funny commentary, excellent challenge/reality balance (much better use of reality through challenge, in fact) and - finally! - I give a damn about the contestants involved. Orange juices all round!

Interestingly, the Us show was pretty much all about the tranformation of the geeks. There's much more of an emphasis on our version on the Beauties really wanting to not fail, and ultimately it might make our version a bit more rewarding.

I hope people don't abandon it after a few episodes when it moves to Channel 4.

21st February 2006

Yeah, but what does this mean?

Coming very soon!

All prizes posted off now.

We hope to have some proper "news" for you eventually.

Or something.

19th February 2006

Slow news week

It's a bit of a slow news period at the moment. Survivor is being quite good though.

So in a brand new irregular series, we'll go through the listings of various places that are asking for contestants and decide whether they're likely to be any good or not in a feature we're calling... The Game Show Gong Show.

Better-than-you-were-expecting-apart-from-that-lazy-second-round Sudo-Q is coming back! This time they only seem to be looking for teams of two. Hopefully they've sorted out that second round as well.
Do you have what it takes to go up against a team of child geniuses? The BBC are looking for contestants to take on The Swot Team... GONG!
HAVE YOU GOT A GREAT PARTY TRICK OR A PET THAT CAN DO AMAZING THINGS? It could be anything from a card trick to playing the national anthem with your armpit... GONG!
We are looking for two teams of family and friends in the same area who wish to compete against each other to sell their antiques or surplus stuff that's lying about cluttering the house... oh alright, GONG!
SCHOOL'S OUT - BRAND NEW PRIMETIME ENTERTAINMENT FROM THE BBC hosted by Danny Wallace... GONG!
Battle of the Exes... GONG!

Well that was less good than I was expecting, frankly.

I haven't sent out Thomas Scott's copy of Countdown yet, but no sooner will I have done than we open the lines for the all-new original and unique Happy Hour competition... Take the Money or Don't Take the Money II! With £200 top prize! Yowsah!

16th February 2006

We're in the Radio Times!

Cheers Brian! This saves me 60p, or whatever it is.

Well done everyone. We think Channel 4 is lying to you when they say the selection is random, but never mind.

Best shows of all time ever

The results of UKgameshows.com recent polls are now up. Whilst I was writing it I thought it was a bit crap, but it doesn't actually read too badly in the end. It's like a director's commentary round here.

In other news, Beauty and the Geek's ratings on E4 dropped 66,900 on the week before - about 25%. Harsh! Yesterday's episode was a bit better, but I still think there's something a bit off with the show structure.

12th February 2006

Play Bullseye...

For money! For money! Here. Quite nicely done, but at 50p a throw (although your first game is free) it's a bit expensive.

Also! Have you won The Gameshow Gameshow?

11th February 2006

Right, answers to The Gameshow Gameshow are now up. The winner will be announced tomorrow.

Do you remember I said I was going to write a feature this weekend? Well I've lied as it turns out, we're merely going to update the Deal Around the World Page with some pictures of the US show (it's not done yet, it will be added later today). However, we might have something a bit special and exclusive for next weekend. How exciting!

Edit: Deal Around the World now updated.

9th February 2006

Mark Speight or No Mark Speight?

Chums, I'm a little fed up.

As you may or may not know, Brig Bother has a small role in the existence of UKGameshows.com, and has done for the best part of ten years. That's not a picture of me on the right there, incidentally.

One of the things I "do" these days is try and research information on and keep tabs on older shows. But chums! I've hit a brick wall.

Do you remember Incredible Games? You do? Brilliant! It was originally hosted by David Walliams wearing plastic yellow hair, but for series two was replaced by an American guy. Or perhaps he was Canadian? I can't remember. The one thing I definitely remember, however is that it bloody wasn't bloody Mark Speight. This wouldn't be a problem, but the amount of times different people have changed the name on the entry to Mark Speight... well let's just say, if we were counting on fingers, I've had to forcefully step in the best part of the digits on one hand.

I am so confident of this, if there was a show called Mark or No Mark, I would gamble the value of my house on the box marked "No Mark".

So I think it's time to open my wallet.

Can you remember the name of guy who took over from David Walliams on Incredible Games?
Here's the deal. If you know who it is, and can provide some sort of evidence as to the guy's name, and you're the first person, I will give you £10. PayPal-ed. Inmmediately.
Acceptable evidence includes a page reference to a book or magazine. You won't need to send the things themselves, the Bar Backroom has a library with seven million items in.
Do you have video footage? If you can send us an episode over the net, this counts as hard evidence. If you have an episode on tape, e-mail me. I'd like you to send it to me and I'll reimburse the costs.
If you have anything else you think can be used as evidence, let me know.
As some sort of clue, he was the geeky American/Canadian character from the comedy behind the scenes bits from Saturday morning kids show Motormouth - this was in the later series with Andy Crane hosting and shouldn't be confused with the original Spin-Off thing.
Am I misremembering? I am so utterly, utterly confident on this that if anyone can prove with evidence similar to the above (and no, Google doesn't count) that I am actually in the wrong here, the first person can nominate a charity and I'll donate £20 to it.

Happy hunting!

8th February 2006

Tale as old as time...

Don't forget that the Happy Hour competition closes on Friday.

Right! We were going to dissect Beauty and the Geek UK weren't we? Well, there's no point discussing the idea itself because we've already said that we're a fan (seven girls pair up with seven geeks, the girls must teach the geeks to become babe magnets, the geeks must try and pass on some of their brains to the girls. Pairs are eliminated week by week until just one remain, proving that she's more than a pretty face and he's more than a spotty geek, and win £40,000). It follows the format of the American original fairly closely, what we're interested in are the production choices which we think hurt it a bit.

How should we do this?

We're going to "do" a table! Hurrah!

Beauty!

U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi!

They've kept Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) by Ver Pet Shop Boys as the show's theme. This is ingenious - let's take a look at those lyrics for those of you who aren't "in the know" - "I've got the brains, you've got the looks - let's make lots of money!" This succinctly and accurately sums up the theme of the show rather well, namely that as a pairing, one of them has "brains" (the geeks), whilst the other one has "looks" (the beauties) and together they could be making "lots of money" (the £40,000 prize). In fact the last show we can think of to do such a thing was Chain Letters ("Take a word! Change a letter! Do it again! And you've got a chain! Win a sofa! Etc."), however the crucial point to make is that Beauty and the Geek isn't, in fact, copying the Chain Letters formula, because Opportunities was first released in 1985, pre-dating Chain Letters by a good two years. What the Pet Shop Boys have clearly done is spend their entire careers manipulating the print, broadcast and music media in such a way for this programme to exist twenty years later. In summary: you might think Chain Letters had an "original" theme tune idea but you were wrong, and suggests The Pet Shop Boys are clearly part of some Illuminati cabal.
There's much more variety in the "geeks" in our version. The US show tends to go for the really obvious stereotype - which in a way is fair enough. Our geeks all seem to be schooled in various different disciplines (only one was a computer scientist, as I recall) and from much more varied backgrounds. Although they all seem to be students.
One of the beauties looks a bit like Jenny Powell.
The butler is called Gates.
Er.
That's it.

The beauties are, I'm reliably informed, "not all that".
There's no "proper" host, merely comic David Mitchell commentating over the top. This is really stupid. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. Any show where the challenges form the meat of the show rather than the reality, as this one does, absolutely must have a visible moderator to act as a referee and focal point to lend the thing gravitas. Could you imagine The Mole without a host and instead having someone commentate in the past tense over what the rules of the challenges are whilst we join them part-way through all the time? I would rather hope not. Just imagine how much more excellent it would be if, say, Mr C Hips of the general knowledge task also asked the questions in the elimination test, and gave the instructions on what the days tasks were going to be (good thing: simultaneous reactions!), rather than have the mute butler make them read a message from a silver platter individually.
Speaking of the elimination test, having the contestants read out the questions on from some sort of Palm Pilot (whoo! Technology! Modern!) is rubbish. Firstly, it misses out on one of the more interesting things from the US show - namely the cutaway to the reactions of the partners watching everything on a screen in a different room. Whatsmore, with any quiz there's a lot riding on the luck of the questions. In the US show, the contestants take it turns to pick cards numbered 1-6 with questions on them, which at least gives the illusion of control. Since all the questions in UK show seem predetermined, it'd be totally fair to feel a bit put out if your questions are perceived to be more difficult. And having amatuers read the questions out to each means they can't build the tension nearly as well as a proper host could.
Given that in the UK, an hour of airtime is a good five minutes more than its equivilent in the US, how come the first episode feels so rushed? I'm convinced it didn't take a full half-hour in the US show for everyone to introduce themselves, pair-up, find a bed and so on. The first set of challenges in our first episode felt like a bit of an afterthought in honesty. Pacing!
And there were probably other things as well. Oh yeah - having the other couples watch the elimination quiz from the balcony? Why ruin a perfectly good future reaction of having them wait and see who returns?
One of the elimination questions last night asked "how many members were there in S Club?" This is a really bad question. The answer they were looking for is 7, as in S Club 7, but 6 would have been a perfectly valid answer, since when one of them left and the name changed to just S Club there were now, er, six of them. And why "celebrity culture" for the geeks anyway? What was wrong with "pop music, as it relates to dance" like in the original?

But let's not feel too down here, we're really picky because we expect greatness from the people making it. What's there is perfectly entertaining, we just think the production choices behind the original US show make more sense and make for a better show.

7th February 2006

Beauty and the Geek UK is less good then we'd have liked :(

Not much time for an explanation this evening. We suspect we'd have enjoyed it more if we hadn't seen the US show. But we have.

On the plus side, it's another show produced by the Hugill/Davey/Gerard the Alien combination. On the other hand, it's rather less good than Playing it Straight.

Hey! We'll have much more time tomorrow for a proper dissection. It's not awful, and they've kept The Pet Shop Boys theme. It's just not up to the standards we were expecting.

5th February 2006

**And speaking of Survivor...**

It's the first show you can effectivelty "buy" to download from CBS On Demand. Hurrah! They could make $40 from me during the next three months really easily!

Except:

You can't use it outside the US.
And even if I did, my bank charges me £1 everytime I need to convert into a foreign currency for payment. $1.99 doesn't seem too-ooo-ooo unreasonable, but if I were to try it my end it would end up costing me £2.30-ish, which is frankly quite steep for an episode of a telly show I can only watch on one computer and not burn.

So it'as back to, ahem, "different" methods to be able to watch. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

4th February 2006

It's quiet round here, isn't it?

Never mind, we'll make the effort to at least get a new feature up for next week, even if other news is a bit slow.

Survivor was alright.